In the dog days of August, when few were paying much attention, came news that is pregnant with significance in more ways than one. Britain is living through a baby boom, the prime cause of a population rise of 419,900 for the year 2011-12, a level last seen in 1972. The increase in births means the UK's population is now predicted to overtake France and Germany within a few decades. This demographic surge was unexpected: economic downturns are usually accompanied by falls in fertility, as we are now seeing in the United States. Southern and Eastern Europe still have declining populations, while Germany's modest growth of 166,200 is due to immigration rather than fertility, which remains far below replacement rate. Indeed, only France and Ireland are above it.

Where does this demographic surge leave the prophecies of Europe's crisis of civilisation? Catholics in particular have drawn attention to the fact that Europe's progressive detachment from the God of the Bible has meant the neglect of the first biblical commandment: "Be fruitful and multiply." In 2003, Pope John Paul II issued one of his last documents, Ecclesia in Europa, in which he warned Europeans that they were "somewhat like heirs who have squandered a patrimony", their "practical agnosticism and religious indifference" having found expression in a "fear of the future", an "inner emptiness" and above all "the diminished number of births". In 2005 the Polish pontiff's American biographer, George Weigel, followed this remonstrance with his own jeremiad, The Cube and the Cathedral, which argued with that this "crisis of civilisational morale" was causing Western Europe to commit "what looks alarmingly like demographic suicide". Weigel went further, warning that "Europe's depopulation, and the consequent immigration from the Islamic world, have opened up the possibility that [Islamist control of Europe] will be achieved not by conquest but by the ballot box".

So, does the British baby boom demonstrate that this diagnosis was wrong? Not necessarily. And yet this least zealous of nations is apparently voting for the future with the patter of tiny feet. Is the boom simply the indirect consequence of mass immigration, due to a higher birthrate among immigrants? The figures show that foreign-born women are still considerably more fertile than those born in Britain, with 2.2 compared to 1.9 children respectively, and that the former are relatively more numerous than a decade ago. A quarter of children are born to immigrant mothers today, up from a sixth a decade ago. Unless immigration falls substantially, which cannot happen as long as Britain does not control its borders, it is likely that this proportion will continue to rise. However, it is also true that 75 per cent of the 813,000 births in 2011-12 were to British-born mothers — more than 600,000 of them. These children alone would be enough to give Britain the highest birthrate in Europe.

given: "The figures show that foreign-born women are still considerably more fertile than those born in Britain, with 2.2 compared to 1.9 children respectively, and that the former are relatively more numerous than a decade ago." then the increase in population must come from other than indigenous Brits because it requires 2.1 children per just to maintain a population

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